"Give me a light and follow me on this," Jones ordered. He flipped another page, checking the 60Hz line. "Nothing…nothing. Those diesel boats are pretty good…but if they're quiet, they ain't snorting, and if they ain't snorting they ain't going very far…Asheville sprinted out this way, and probably then she came back in…" Another page.

"No rescue, sir?" It had taken fully thirty seconds for the question to be asked.

"How deep's the water?"

"I know that, but the escape trunks…I mean, I've seen it, there's three of them."

Jones didn't even look up, taking a puff off his first smoke in years.

"Yeah, the mom's hatch, that's what we called it on Dallas. 'See, mom, if anything goes wrong, we can get out right there.' Chief, you don't get off one of these things, okay? You don't. That ship is dead, and so's her crew. I want to see why."

"But we already have the crush sounds."

"I know. I also know that two of our carriers had a little accident today." Those sounds were on the SOSUS printouts, too.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything." Another page. At the bottom of it was a large black blotch, the loud sound that marked the death of USS Asheville and all—"What the fuck is this?"

"We think it's a double-plot, sir. The bearing's almost the same as the Asheville sound, and we think the computer—"

"The time's off, goddamn it, a whole four minutes." He flipped back three pages. "See, that's somebody else."

"Charlotte?"

It was then that Jones felt even colder. His head swam a little from the cigarette, and he remembered why he'd quit. The same signature on the paper, a diesel boat snorting, and, later, a 688-class sprinting. The sounds were so close, nearly identical, and the coincidence of the bearing from the new seafloor array could have made almost anyone think…

"Call Admiral Mancuso and find out if Charlotte has checked in."

"But—"

"Right now, Senior Chief!"